House Call
by Oldach's Dream
Summary: House faces some unexpected repercussions from his actions in ‘One day, One room.’ Repercussions that have nothing to do with the rape victim. Hasn’t been done before, I assure you. Strong HouseWilson friendship. Preslash, if you wanna see it. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

House Call

Summary: House faces some unexpected repercussions from his actions in 'One day, One room.' Repercussions that have nothing to do with the rape victim. Hasn't been done before, I assure you. No immediate pairings.

A/N: I wrote this right after the episode aired and just stumbled upon it again, hiding out in one of my many computer folders. Like I said, this has nothing to do with House's father, I promise. But there will be a fair helping of angsty goodness, and a lot of House/Wilson friendship. And preslash. Possibly real slash, depending on how many reviews I get and what my Muse feels up to.

Disclaimer: I love Hugh Laurie's accent. But do you hear him using it in the show? No? Well, there you go - he ain't mine. Neither, consequently, are the others. Except Chase. I stole Chase.

* * *

"_Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance." --Thomas Carlyle_

* * *

Dr. House limped through the doors of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital with the full intention of ignoring absolutely everybody. This goal, albeit not new for him, was due to much more than his usual crankiness and distaste for human interaction as a general rule of thumb.

He was feeling, in large part, like an old idiot. A narrow-minded one, at that; and while he would never admit it, it wasn't a feeling he was overly fond of. He was used to having the upper hand in pretty much every situation, and this lack of control reminded his eerily of his childhood.

Which he supposed, was the price he paid.

He'd made it through the parking lot without incident and was fairly confident that he'd have at least a while before he'd have to deal with Cuddy, Wilson or any of his fellows.

So of course, the first thing he saw when he walked into the building was Cuddy at the Nurse's reception desk. Oh, and look at that, she was talking to Wilson. That just freakin' figured.

Making a split second decision, he turned around and tried to head out the doors through which he'd just come.

Oh, well, hello, Cameron.

"House!" The petite brunette screeched loud enough to gain the attention of every employee and patient in the near general vicinity. Although the older doctor couldn't see it, he was sure Cuddy and Wilson had stopped whatever they'd been doing and turned to look. Everyone loved a show.

"What happened to your face?"

"What happened to yours?" He countered with a sneer, and turned back around, seeing as his escape plan had been ruined anyway, he might as well face the rest of them.

"House." Wilson was the first to speak when he managed to limp all the way over to the desk, Cameron following close behind. "That's a great look for you. Very school yard rock meets fight with the barbarians."

Although his words were teasing, House didn't miss how his eyes lingered much longer than necessary on him, concern unhidden.

"House." Cuddy stepped closer as if she was about to examine him.

"That's my name." He mumbled, holding up a hand to stop the older woman's probing. It didn't work.

"That cut looks like it needs stitches." Her fingers danced over dried, clotting blood.

Okay, yeah, it probably did.

"Those bruises look horrible."

"Really?" He did nothing to hide the sarcasm. "'Cause they feel fantastic."

"Can you even see out of that eye?"

"If I say no, will you unbutton your blouse?" He could see Wilson shaking his head and was well aware of Cameron still hovering.

"What the hell happened?" She finally backed off, probably a little shocked that she'd gotten a full examination of his battered face. In truth, House had wanted to make sure that nothing was more screwed up than he could tell with one good eye.

"Bar fight." He said simply. He knew they thought he was lying. "Any new cases?"

"Your face." Wilson chimed in.

"Is diagnostically boring." House said with a false air of enlightenment.

"Bet the explanation behind it isn't." Cameron pushed, oh so helpfully.

"Don't you have sick people to fix?" The grumpy man turned to her and rudely, and in his typical fashion, shoed her away. She didn't budge.

"Whoa!" A new voice joined the ones already crowding him. This one had an accent. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Pissed off a pimp." House answered Chase's inquiry easily. "What are you doing down here?" He looked again to Cameron. "Both of you. Aren't there _any _sick people in this hospital?"

Chase held up the file he was carrying as if it were a peace offering, before handing it over to Wilson. "Patient in exam room two has a large mass in her lower lung."

Wilson took the file but kept his gaze locked on his friend, not moving. "You heard the man!" House exclaimed. "Cancer. Go do that thing you do. Play God. Make her fall in love with you. I'm going to my office."

And so he turned to do just that, ducklings close behind, Cuddy's gaze not leaving his back until they made it to the elevator.

Not a word was spoken between the three doctors, although Cameron did open her mouth once, only to get a silencing death glare in response.

Forty-eight long, silent and tense seconds later, Forman, who had been making coffee, turned around at the sound of their entrance. "Holy crap." He dropped the filter, spilling coffee grounds all over the counter and floor.

House eyed the mess distastefully. "You're cleaning that up." He met Foreman's two good eyes with his one working one. "Or no MRI's for a week"

Ignoring the elder man's good humor, he took an inquiring step forward, looking at Chase and Cameron, who both shrugged, before looking at House again. "Who'd you piss off?"

"The fuzz." He answered, which probably wasn't hard to believe, given his recent trial.

Cameron's nervous, "You're not going back to jail, are you?" And the other two's subsequent looks of fear informed him that pissed off cops weren't yet back on the list of appropriate things to joke about.

"No, I'm not going back to jail," he sighed, pulling out a chair and sitting down, trying not to wince at the pain that caused his other, not so obvious, injuries. Popped a Vicodin and amended, "Unless I kill one of you for hovering."

------------

"What the hell happened to House?" Became the question of the day.

House, who had thoroughly been dreading going to work since last night, ended up having the most fun out of everyone he happened to make contact with.

It started later in the morning with going to the cafeteria. He got on the elevator alone, only to have it pushed open at the last minute by a doctor he vaguely knew from Radiology.

"God, House," that old man sighed, making no efforts to look anywhere other than his face. "Getting shot wasn't enough?"

"Yeah," the cynical man sighed, and then smirked; despite the pain it caused the gash on his right cheek. "I have this neighbor that works for the mafia. Big deal guy. Tried to convert me to his way of life."

Seeing the horrified expression on the man's face, House knew he'd hit an awesome nerve. "Ever wonder how hot fire-pokers can actually get?" He left the elevator rubbing absently at a place on his chest, and wasn't surprised, although Radiology and the cafeteria were on the same floor, when the man didn't step out of the elevator with him.

The security guard at the entrance to the cafeteria was the next astonished expression he got. "Gang war." He told the large black man without slowing his pace or waiting for him to verbalize his question. "Gotta protect my turf."

A few minutes and a couple dozen obvious stares and loud whispers later, a pimply face med student handed him a tray of what might have been scrabbled eggs and bacon. "Geez, House, get into a fight with a patient again?"

Instead of answering, he asked, "Does everyone in this hospital know my name?"

The kid just shrugged. "You're kinda the only thing the nurses gossip about. The only thing worth listening about, anyway."

"Thanks." And he walked away.

Two seconds after he sat down, alone, at a table in the back of the room, Wilson appeared out of nowhere. "You gonna tell me what happened?" He asked calmly, standing - hovering - over his shoulder.

House dropped his fork back down on his plate and reached into his coat pocket. Just the motion of popping the pills made him feel a little better.

"My dad stopped by." He said glibly, and realized after he said that that maybe three Vicodin in two hours was a bit too much. Given his recent cut back. "He's still pretty pissed I never joined the army."

"House-"

"Oh, fine," the elder man grumbled, pretending to concede. "I picked a hooker with a really mean temper and a flare for sadomasochism."

"So, you're not going to tell me?" The younger man confirmed with a sharp nod and an annoyed tone. "Fine."

And that was the last he heard of it.

For thirty-eight minutes, anyway.

On his way back to his office he happened upon a nurse, new, he took it, as he didn't recognize her at all.

"Early onset Volgeridias." He said, adapting a sad tone, sniffling slightly, taking advantage of the fact that this woman didn't know him at all, and thus couldn't tell he was acting out of character. "Bruising means I'm bleeding internally. Probably only have another year."

She looked aghast, and House barely hid a smirk as he finished off the lie with a pathetically whimpered, "It's worst when people stare."

She skittered away quickly, mumbling something about tests and lab work. House laughed once he was securely back in his office, propping his legs up on his desk, he leaned back and closed his eyes.

Hell, maybe this wasn't such a bad thing after all.

TBC...

If anyone's interested.


	2. Chapter 2

House Call

Part Two

* * *

"_The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes." --Madame de Stael _

* * *

Six-thirty that evening found House in the clinic. Not in an Exam Room, where one might happen upon a doctor normally, but camped out in the patient waiting area. He was sitting in a chair with a rather large group of ailing, bleeding, sniffling and itchy people surrounding him.

"What's going on?" Wilson asked, approaching Cuddy, who was watching the scene from a safe distance away.

"He's telling them a story." She said with a mocking, exasperated tone that couldn't _quite _hide her amusement.

The Oncologist tuned in to what his friend was saying.

"...So there we were, right in the thick of the woods. Our broken paddles and my cane were the only things we had to protect ourselves, it was getting dark and we were hungry-"

"What about the wolf you shot?" A gangly looking teenager interrupted then, acting as though House's story was some cool new wave of interactive television. "From earlier that afternoon?"

"It was long gone by then," House answered smoothly, sounding only slightly irate.

"Yeah," A woman maybe a little younger than Cameron piped up. "The bear got it, right?" She fluttered long, attractive lashes.

House smiled back, looking uncharacteristically bashful - that was until Wilson caught sight of the manipulative gleam in his eye. "That's right," he agreed, looking at her fondly. "The bear got it. And Jack's hand. He was on the verge of collapsing from blood-loss when we finally stumbled upon this deserted looking cabin smack dap in the middle of these woods."

"Tell me you didn't go in." A wary voice wafted up from the crowd and House just shook his head once quickly.

"Of course we went in." He snapped, sounding insulted. "We were wet, shivering, the sun was about to go down-"

"Haven't you ever watched a horror movie?" It was a female voice that jumped out from the masses this time, sounding a little all knowing.

"Yeah," another one spoke up. "Don't you know never to go in the abandoned building?"

"Yeah, well," House grumbled. "Trust me, when your two options are dying from hypothermia and facing some imaginary ghosts, it'll pretty much be a no-brainer."

"So what happened next?" The impatient demand elicited silence from the rest of the crowd and Wilson was awed at yet again being witness to his friend's amazing ability capture and keep such a wide variety of attentions.

"Well-" And House may well have launched into his tall-tale yet again, had it not been for Nurse Cadre coming down the hall, frowning only slightly at the herd of patients crowded together and looking so intent in her waiting room.

That frown smoothed into a look of understanding when she caught sight of House, the center of attention that he was. Nurse Cadre was a strict-looking old lady only a few months away from retirement. She'd been at Princeton-Plainsboro longer than Wilson, Cuddy or House, and accepted the crippled man for who he was only because of the one common dominator they shared; constant boredom.

Wilson would swear sometimes, if he didn't know any better, that Nurse Cadre and House were related. She was one of the only people in the hospital - other than the ones in his immediate circle of interlocking relationships - that could put up with or stand up to Greg House.

"Hate to ruin the fun," she rasped, placing her hands on her hips sternly. "But the clinic's closed for the day."

There was an eruption of immediate protests from the group, and whether they were upset that they hadn't gotten time in with a doctor, or because they wouldn't be able to hear the rest of Greg's story, was truly a toss-up.

"You heard the lady," House declared when everyone looked back up at him, to see if he would actually comply with the order. "Go home. Eat some chicken noodle soup."

He stood up, cringing in a way that had become par for the course since this morning, and used his cane to point to a middle-aged man near the back of the crowd. "'Cept you."

Turning to Cuddy as if he wasn't all surprised she'd witnessed his entire spectacle. "He needs blood work and treatment for a Grade A bacterial infection." Turning back to the group again, he waved his cane in a semi-circle. "It's been a pleasure."

He was out of the lobby before any more protests could sound.

"House," Wilson animated to Cuddy after his limping friend was gone, "Has left the building."

"I don't know whether to be worried about him or mad at him." Her confusion was genuine. And shared.

"At least he seems to be enjoying himself." The well-loved Oncologist shrugged to hide his own worry, watching as patients slowly trickled out the hospital doors. "I don't think he's ever stayed at work this long. Other than when he's got a case."

"Did you find out what happened to him?" She inquired seriously. "What really happened?"

James just fixed her with an obvious stare. "Right." She sighed, crossing her arms and looking tired. "It's House."

---------------

James Wilson was a skirt-chaser by nature, and always had been. He blamed his brother, actually, because he'd found that when he sat down and thought about it - really thought about it - he could trace the early days of his Playboy persona to bets and challenges put forth by the elder of the two.

He was the middle child, yet he'd lost his virginity first, started dating first, and was the one most often in trouble with his parents for braking curfew and doing other, various scandalous things that tended to fog up car windows and make bedsprings creak obnoxiously.

His parents were good people, and had taught, amongst other valuable life lessons, to never get committed to any person or thing unless he had a true devotion for it. James, as far as romantic relationships went, had had a true devotion for all his wives, and all his girlfriends.

It was just hard to convince them of that when all he ever seemed to do was cheat on them.

So, when his latest girlfriend had kicked him out of her apartment, he hadn't exactly been surprised, or even especially sorry. He knew this relationship was doomed to fail; they all seemed doomed to fail.

In fact - although he tried not to think about it too often - the only constants in his life were his job and the appropriately dubbed 'Stupid, screwed up friendship' he shared with Greg House.

So, two nights later, when he was knocking on his best friend's door at two-thirty seven in the morning, lugging behind him his battered and abused suitcase, he wasn't shocked that his life had once again brought him back to this doorstep.

"Again?" House greeted him when he opened the door.

James nodded silently and was rather pleased when the older man paused for only a few seconds before opening the door wide enough to allow him to step through the threshold.

House, for his part, didn't look much better than he had the day before. The bruises were still deep shades of browns and army-drab greens and the cut had scabbed over in an ugly, thick manner, but his eye had finally un-swollen and opened fully, now simply bruised around the edges.

"Beer in the fridge?' He tried, when Greg wouldn't stop looking at him with those impossibly expressive blue eyes.

"Of course." He mumbled, still studying him. "So what'd you do? Cheat on the nurse with a nurse?"

"House-"

"Or was it an intern?" He interrupted casually. "I don't remember. Her name was Sally, wasn't it?"

"Sara." James corrected, his bag off to the side of the door and shrugging off his jacket. He hadn't told House about his most recent girlfriend, but wasn't surprised at all that the older man had somehow come across the information.

"Sara." House repeated. "That's cute."

"So was she." James said wistfully.

"But someone else was cuter, right?" Greg was incredibly blunt, James was used to that, and it didn't faze him; it was actually rather comforting.

"So," he evaded, "Beer?" Making his way to the kitchen, he pulled open the fridge and grabbed a glass bottle. Standing there with the door open, he pulled off the top and took a long swig. Greg's cane thumped rhythmically against the floor until he was next to him.

James handed him one without looking away from the refrigerator. "God, have you been shopping at all since the last time I've been here?"

"So, what was it this time, Jimmy?" He ignored the younger man's bewildered expression. "Hot blonde at a bar? Nurse?"

"There's nothing in here except left over Pizza and an Orange." He balked, wondering why the hell his friend had an Orange.

"So if Sara was an intern and Jenny was a nurse and what's her face was an actual patient, that means next up is someone not directly linked to your job." House actually had his dating patterns down to a mathematical form.

Somehow, that wasn't shocking.

James shut the fridge and looked at Greg, who was clad in sweats, a t-shirt and seemed to be sagging slightly against his cane. "Were you asleep?"

"It's two-thirty in the morning." Came the answer that could mean anything to the man with the chronic insomnia.

They moved their conversation smoothly into the living room, where James flopped down on the couch and Greg sat slowly at the Piano bench, plucking a note randomly.

"Her name was Barb." James divulged. "I met her at a club Sara dragged me to last week."

"Damn women," his friend cursed them sarcastically. "When will they learn that they can't take you anywhere?"

"I was happy with Sara." James felt the need to tell him, although he wasn't sure why, he knew exactly what response it would get.

"You're happy with all of them." Greg told him easily. "You don't know how to be happy, so you sabotage it when you happen to stumble across it."

"I think you're projecting." James pointed out lightly.

"Says the man with three ex-wives and the most depressing job known to man." Greg bit back lightly, playing out a little tune as he did so.

"What happened to your face?" He abruptly changed the topic, wondering if it would do any good.

"I already told you," House was one person you could almost never catch off guard.

"No, you already lied to me." James amended. "What happened to 'you don't lie'?"

"Everybody lies."

"Yeah, I set myself up for that one." He took another swig of his beer, having almost forgotten that he had it.

"It was a patient." He said suddenly, and when James turned around to look at him, Greg kept his own eyes steadily fixed on the keys of the piano. "I paid a bunch of clinic patients to leave the other day, so I wouldn't have to treat them. One came back and paid his regards."

"Are you lying?" James asked slowly. The words were spoken slower, more deliberately than the other times in the last thirty-six hours when he'd 'confessed' the reasons behind his injuries.

But still, House was an intertwining mess of contradictions and anomalies. As were most people, admittedly, but he was a kick-ass lair to boot.

"I guess it was his wife that I sent away." He said in way of an answer. "She got sick and he blamed me."

"Was she... I mean, is she okay?" House was also a great conductor for guilt. In fact, James had never met someone so willing to blame himself when things went wrong, and he knew losing a patient to a simple mistake like that would bring him down quite a few notches.

"She's fine." House dismissed, switching tunes and playing something classical sounding that was only vaguely familiar to James. "I was actually pretty impressed that he had the initiative to track me down."

"So he just came over and beat you up?" James couldn't help but laugh. "God, that's a little... High School reminisce."

"No, actually he came over, beat me up, then held a knife to my throat until I went to their house and figured out what was wrong with her." He said it so casually, without so much as a hitch in his voice, that the younger man actually had to blink a few times and shake his head sharply to make sure he hadn't daydreamed or hallucinated the response.

"...what?" He finally managed.

"Well, it wasn't so much at my throat while he was driving," as if explaining away the logistics made it all better. "Just kinda pointed in my general direction. But you get the drift."

"He held you hostage at knife point?" James gaped, still turned on the couch and staring at his friend.

"It was overkill, really," House shrugged, still playing that piano. "I probably would have helped them without the added incentive. But hey, I guess he had no way of knowing that."

"House..." James took a deep breath, then another. "Greg..."

"Oh, don't do that." His friend sighed before he could work out exactly what it was he was going to say.

"Don't do what?" He was beginning, ever so slowly, to regain feeling in the majority of his body parts. "Don't be concerned that some psychopath with a knife almost killed you?"

The music stopped abruptly, Greg's hands slapped down onto the keys, making an ugly, distorted sound. "First off, he was never going to kill me. He wanted my help and he knew how to get it. Second, I was actually more _worried _about him killing me when he was beating the crap out of me, having the knife and wielding all the power seemed to keep in control."

The fact that Greg was concerned about being killed at all was really all James took away from that oddly detached and slightly contradicting statement.

"And lastly, I cured his wife, got them medicine for free, and I'm sure she's gonna be fine. _And _I changed the locks. Just in case." Greg's eyes met his at last. "So stop worrying."

"I...I... I can't believe you've been treating this whole thing like a...a _joke _for the last three days." He finally exclaimed. "You could have been seriously hurt!"

"Yeah," Greg acknowledged easily, "but I wasn't."

"He... He could have done anything to you." James went on, not sure what he was trying to gain by pointing all this out.

"Probably." Greg admitted easily, again.

"What if you hadn't cured his wife?" His anger had been growing steadily, although he wasn't sure exactly who it was directed at.

Greg rolled his eyes. "She had Esophagitis caused by an infection. Comes equipped with some nasty symptoms, but very treatable."

"How'd you get them medicine for free?" He circled back on one of his previous statements, still not sure why it mattered. He felt scattered and a little out of touch with reality.

"I paid for it." He said. "I also recommended them a nice doctor at Princeton General."

"Are you going to file a police report?" He demanded, latching onto that, already wanting to see this man behind bars.

"After the whole Tritter thing, I'm never going near a police station voluntarily, ever again." And that's when James Wilson - sweet, kind Oncologist, loved and respected by all - experienced for the first time the physical longing of wanting to beat someone to death with a tire iron - or a similarly deadly blunt object.

He knew Greg's recent run-in with the police had been scarring. Hell, he'd experienced much of the drama first hand; been the one to find Greg passed out from a drug overdose on this very floor, made the deal, risked their stupid screwed up friendship. But for it to have had such a lasting affect that the older man wouldn't even consider going to the police now, when such an obvious crime had been perpetrated against him, well, that was more than a little frightening.

"Stop worrying." Greg said casually, seemingly reading his thoughts. "It's all over and done with."

"You're underplaying this." James practically snarled at him. "You were scared and traumatized and you're trying to make that go away by turning it into a joke."

Greg nodded, looking at him thoughtfully, his eyes dancing with intense and interwoven knowledge. "Or," he said casually. "You're upset that I didn't come running straight to you after the fact. You feel left out because you didn't get to play hero and you're trying to upset me now so you can."

James balked. The notion that he would want his best friend to become upset and act traumatized for the sake of his own neediness was completely...

_Well, damn it._

"Why _didn't _you come to me?" His tone was softer, more subdued. Realization finally hitting hard.

"It was no big deal." Greg shrugged.

"No, of course not." James laughed a hollow laugh that carried the polar opposite of humor with it. "Crazed patient with a knife. No biggie."

"He wasn't crazed and he wasn't my patient." House repeated. "Can we stop talking about it now?"

"You're the one who brought it up." James bit back.

"No," House rolled his eyes, tone obvious and plain. "You did."

"You told me the truth." He noted. Which, with Greg, was a fair point to make.

"Would you have let it go if I hadn't?" He retaliated, and James had to concede a little.

Silence stretched between them for a while. Greg shifted his cane from hand to hand, spinning it in the air occasionally; James sipped his almost empty beer and caressed the smooth leather on the back of the couch.

"Are you going to tell Cuddy?" He finally inquired, still not ready to do as his friend asked and let it go. He still felt a little hurt that the Diagnostician hadn't come to him when he could have helped, and more than a little guilty, as well. That he hadn't been paying more attention, that he hadn't pushed it farther when he so obviously could have.

He'd fallen into one of House's traps, for the first time in a long time. He'd let his best friend divert attention away from himself, let him joke up so many walls of defenses that he couldn't see what was really going on within them. He'd been so caught up in his own life, his own circle of meaningless romantic drama, that he'd failed to notice.

He wondered absently, if Sara hadn't kicked him out tonight, if he ever would have found out about Greg's near-death experience.

"No." The older man answered his previous question. "She wouldn't believe me-"

"Yes she would." James snapped at once, almost eagerly, hoping to convince him to take some sort of action. "You're an ass, House, but she knows you wouldn't lie about this."

"-and even if she did believe me," he went on with what he'd been saying before, not paying any mind to his best friend's helpful words of optimism. "All she'd do is insist on filing a police report. And since I have no evidence-"

"You went to their house, right?" James was encouraged when he nodded. "You know where they live, you got them prescription-"

"I'm not telling Cuddy and I'm not filing a police report." The older man snapped, suddenly angrier than he had been all evening. "And if you try to do either, I'll claim I was lying."

Slowly, the Oncologist shook his head back and forth. "God, House," he said wearily. "You sound like a battered housewife."

"Just drop it, Jimmy." Greg's tone was borderline pleading, still tinged with anger, and there was really nothing more James could do for his friend except agree and let the subject go.

--------------

The next day at work, Wilson wouldn't let his mind wander. He was tired, emotionally drained from the previous night's conversation, physically exhausted from staying up so late and sleeping what few hours he had on the lumpy cushions of Greg's sofa. He found that he could only keep his focus on one thing at a time. So, all morning and most of the afternoon, he made sure that one thing was work.

In fact, he had comfortably blocked out the existence of anything else, until four-oh-four rolled around. When one of his nurses knocked on his door and said in an undisguised exasperated voice when she entered his office, "Dr. House was looking for you."

He found House after a while of searching. When he wasn't in his own office, on their adjoining balconies, the cafeteria, an Exam Room or any of the other places he normally frequented, James was about to go up to the roof, knowing his friend tended to hide up there when he needed to escape something that was bothering him.

Only, on his way through a hallway to get to the staircase, he found his friend. He'd been subconsciously glancing in every room he passed on his way to the roof, just in case, and he'd seen the back of Greg's head, and the telltale form of his cane setting on a bed next to a patient that James knew was one of his own.

Sliding the door open gently, he caught the dying end of the young boy's giggles, before pulling the glass wall closed behind him and standing there firmly, hands on his hips, torn between disbelief and amusement.

"Dr. Wilson!" The seven-year-old greeted him enthusiastically as the older doctor slowly turned so he too could face the Oncologist. "Dr. House was telling me about the fight he got into with a Gorilla at the zoo."

"Was he now?" Wilson didn't want to say anything discouraging in front of his patient, but sent his friend a look with a mixture of emotions clearly displayed.

"No," Greg rolled his eyes, disregarding his glare entirely. "I was looking for you. Kevin here, just wouldn't stop bothering me about it."

To James, the statement seemed very cold and almost mean, but the young boy giggled sweetly, in a way his doctor hadn't heard in a long while, and not for the first time, he wondered what secret language Greg had with children that he just couldn't grasp. It was especially odd, given how much he claimed - and even acted like - he hated them.

"Well I'm here now." He pointed out, "What do you want?" And if it came out a little harsher than normal, Greg didn't seem to notice, or he ignored it.

"I was hoping for a consult." He made no effort to move from where he was seated on the side of Kevin's bed. "How does a forty-five year old male, crippled, get home when he was driven to work by his overly protective and guilt-ridden best friend, who went to monumental lengths to make sure that said cripple wouldn't be able to ride his bike to work?"

Kevin giggled again and Wilson sighed. "I didn't go to monumental lengths." He argued somewhat weakly.

"You hid my keys." He pointed out.

"It was raining." Was all he could come up with to defend himself.

"It was drizzling." House amended, and turned back around to Kevin before Wilson had a chance to respond. "Such a worrywart." He jerked a thumb in his direction. "He wouldn't even jump in and fight the Kola Bear."

TBC...

_I was thinking about just leaving it at that, but it feels like there needs to be some more resolution. I'm going to try to add one last part that may or may not turn into slash. In the mean time, your comments are much appreciated. _


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Well, here's that resolution I was talking about. I hope you enjoy it. It's not Slash in any real or graphic sense, but I suppose you could read the last bit that way of you wanted to. Contains slight spoilers for the episode 'Resignation.' _

House Call

Part Three

* * *

_Conflict: A disagreement or clash between ideas, principles, or people._

_Resolution: A formal expression of the consensus at a meeting, arrived at after discussion._

_Conflict Resolution: Wilson pushing. House cracking. _

* * *

Greg House had this uncanny ability to..._feel _things differently than most people. It was something he'd more or less stopped thinking about, stopped analyzing, many years ago; but every once in a while it came back to taunt the inner most workings of his mind.

It wasn't that he didn't have feelings - he wasn't a sociopath by any means, despite the rumors that claimed otherwise - he could just function outside the realm of pesky human emotions. He felt what he should - he just felt it later. It's what made him a good doctor. It's what made him great in a crisis.

Wilson had asked him about it a long time ago, back when serious conversations had existed on only the cusp of their friendship, when it was still safe to lie and not care.

He could recall the details of the event astonishingly well - considering he'd been more than a bit tipsy at the time- but that was all just a part of this particular character flaw. They'd been at a bar late one night after work; drinking, bitching and joking, when a young man on the other side of the room had gone into acute anaphylaxis.

Wilson had pulled out his cell and called for an ambulance immediately, sounding nervous on the phone, stumbling over his words. The younger man was out of his comfort zone, and that had made House smile a little, despite the circumstances. It was the first time he'd seen Jimmy truly flustered.

"House!" Wilson had shouted. By this time, that young man had collapsed onto the floor and his face was rapidly draining of color. He'd be dead before the ambulance got there, of that House was sure. "Get over here and help me!"

Jimmy was fending off a frightened bartender and a herd of overeager and drunk onlookers. He was failing miserably in the process of keeping their sort-of-patient alive.

House had sighed and evaluated the situation with the cold and calculating clarity with which he used to diagnosis the whole world. He'd come up with a plan of action before he'd even turned on his barstool.

He'd seen it done once on a daytime TV drama - not ER - and he'd heard stories about it in med school. He'd actually always hoped he'd someday have the chance try his own hand at it - he just wished he were more sober for the big event.

Lawsuits sucked.

Within seconds, he'd been on the floor with his friend and the now barely alive guy, who'd stopped clawing at his throat at least. Back then, there had been no leg pain to stand in his way.

Wilson had looked panicked and terrified, pale and on the verge of collapsing himself. The bartender looked like he was debating between staying put and making sure no one died in his establishment and rushing back behind the counter to dispose of the illegal drugs he no doubt had stashed there. Everyone else had just stood gaping like an idiot.

House already had a straw in his hand.

"You." He'd pointed to a blurry looking guy near the front of the crowd. "Give me your pocket knife."

The large man with the scruffy face had hesitated. House rolled his eyes aggrievedly. "Now." He'd insisted. "Or he dies." Gesturing to the body on the floor, flopping around like a fish that would soon have to be returned to the water or cooked for dinner, he widened his eyes just enough to convey seriousness.

He'd had the pocketknife within moments.

"Please tell me you're not about to-" But Jimmy's words were cut off. They were a bit useless at that point anyway, as House already had the straw cut and the knife plunged into the guy's throat.

Less than a minute later had their not-patient breathing again, color returning to his features and House dragging his friend up and off the floor by the collar of his shirt with his bloody hands.

"We gotta go." He'd said and hastily told the bartender, "Keep pressure on the underside of the cut. He might bleed out." A do-gooder from the masses - probably a designated driver, House hoped at least - leapt forward to comply with his order. "And have the ambulance take him to Princeton General."

"House," Jimmy started, but by then they were out the back door, leaning against a brick wall, sirens could be heard faintly in the background.

"That -" He'd gestured vaguely to the chaos on the other side of where they now stood, "-is a lawsuit waiting to happen."

"We can't just-"

"Yes we can." He'd interrupted. "And we are. He'll be fine."

"You don't-"

"Yes I do." He'd cut off again, beginning to feel repetitive. "You better hope no one remembers our names."

"House-"

"That." He'd glared mockingly, sounding explanatory. "You say that too much. We've gotta come up with some fake names."

"That guy-"

At that point, it was really just getting old. "Will be fine. Now stop it. We're gonna take a walk around the block. Sober up, wait for the ambulance to come and go and then we're gonna go get in your car, drive home and pretend this never happened."

"You saved that guy's life." Jimmy had seemed somewhat humbled, eyes wide and shining, gaze unwavering.

"I save lives everyday. So do you. It's called being a doctor." They had started walking, with House leading the way and staying carefully cloaked in the shadows provided by the dim lights on this city street.

"Not like that." Jimmy had said, and House had to remind himself that he'd been a doctor much longer than this younger man had. He'd found his innocence, his ability to be so easily awed, amazingly adoring.

Though he'd never admit that.

It was the true beginning of their friendship. Their real-life, deeper-meaning, psychoanalytic friendship. It was the beginning. Of something new.

On their slow walk around the block, Jimmy had asked him how he'd managed all that without panicking, without losing his grip and slicing open the guy's jugular. _Even in the best of circumstances_, he'd said, _a good doctor is only ever prepared for the medical side of things. Comforted by the machines and medicine they have at their disposal. You didn't panic. I've never seen anything quite like that before. _

Only House did panic. As they were rounding the second corner on that block, his heart sped up and his hands started to shake, he'd felt clammy and nauseous. Jimmy noticed, House knew he had, but he said nothing. The older doctor acknowledged the feelings for what they were at this point; moot.

He'd doubled back and doubted his own ability to do what he'd just done, he argued with himself that he was drunk, his hand could easily slip, the straw was not a tube and none of it was sterile. In fact, if this part of his brain had booted itself into function at the proper time, he might not have just slit open a guy's throat with a biker's pocketknife.

He might not have saved his life.

--------------------------

So years later, after time had eroded so much of them, they were back again at this point:

Greg House felt things at a different rate than most people.

He'd feel grief days or even weeks after others had moved on and let go. He'd hang unconsciously onto anger longer than anyone really wanted him too, exploding about the incident that had angered him months after the fact, looking almost surprised with himself when the words spewed out in a seemingly odd setting.

Sometimes James thought he was the only one who even came close to understanding the twisted logic and mess of contradictions that was his best friend. He probably was.

So when Greg told him about the _not-patient _and his _not-murder-attempt _he knew it wouldn't be long before Greg got around to actually experiencing the emotions that should have sprung forth that night almost a week ago.

Sometimes it took months, sometimes - like that night at the bar - it took only minutes. It varied depending on the seriousness of the situation and how much Greg was suppressing. James had a feeling, though, that this impact wouldn't take much longer to hit.

He was right.

James was still sleeping on his friend's couch, and he had no intention of leaving anytime soon. Greg hadn't pestered him about finding an apartment, hadn't played any juvenile pranks that ended in him wetting the bed or doing all the dishes just to make himself smile.

In fact, he'd been astoundingly calm the last week or so, since he'd limped into the hospital and started playing games with everybody.

Too calm.

--------------------------

"He probably just got into a fight." Chase dismissed Cameron's concern as he scanned over a medical file, vainly looking for something to alleviate the boredom they were all currently facing.

He blamed that boredom, if nothing else, on Cameron's inability to drop this subject.

"But with who?" The petite brunette sounded pained and Chase saw Foreman roll his eyes.

"Who cares?" The other doctor snapped. "A patient, a guy in a bar, a drug dealer. What does it matter?"

"It doesn't bother you that our boss has inexplicable injuries?" She fought back, reminding Chase of the incident last year when Foreman had 'stolen' her article. He suddenly had the distinct urge to go down to the ER to see if they needed any extra help.

"They're not inexplicable." The ER was looking better and better. "He just doesn't _want _to explain them."

"And that doesn't bother you?" She asked again, sounding much like Cameron always did - morally outraged.

"No." Foreman slammed shut his own case file. "I could care less what House does in his free time."

"What about you, Chase?" Cameron turned on him. "Do you care that House has been in more pain in usual? That he's taking even more Vicodin? That he jumps every time someone walks into the room?"

At that, Chase raised his eyebrows slightly. "He does not."

She sighed exasperatedly and clenched her teeth. "You guys don't notice anything." She was seething.

"Look," he tried to calm her, because he knew if he didn't, no one else would. "Wilson's moved back in with House. Whatever happened or whatever's going on, I'm sure he can handle it."

"That's your solution?" She snapped. "Let someone else deal with it so we don't have to?"

"It's not _our _problem to deal with." Foreman exclaimed before Chase had the opportunity, spreading out his hands on the table and lying down logic. "He's our boos. We work for him. We're not _supposed _to have a say in his personal life."

Cameron opened her mouth to argue again, but Chase beat her to it. "He wouldn't give us the time of day even if we did try to pry."

Two pairs of eyes met hers, one defiantly, one almost sympathetically with an added layer of firmness. She was outnumbered.

"Fine." She was still seething, but she stood up and walked towards the door. For a split second, Chase was terrified that she'd do something that they'd all later regret. Instead, she just declared, "I'm going to the clinic. Page me if we get a case." She turned around before mumbling, "Or if either of you grow a moral conscious."

Then she was gone, and Chase let out a breath of relief.

"Do you think she's gonna try to talk to him?" Foreman asked after a few moments of relatively tense silence.

"I hope not." He answered honestly. "Really, what good has ever come from trying to talk to House about something personal?"

It was a rhetorical question but Foreman nodded in agreement. It wasn't often that these two shared an opinion, but for now, Chase was glad to have someone on his side.

"Is Wilson really living with House again?" He questioned curiously and Chase let yet another file drop to the desk. Maybe it was time to find a crossword puzzle. "Or did you just say that to shut Cameron up?"

"I heard them talking this morning." He explained, shuffling things around until he found the magazine he was looking for. Much more interesting than case files. "Wilson's either sleeping on House's couch or House is camping out in his motel room. But they're defiantly living together."

"That's good." Foreman nodded absently and only looked up again when he felt Chase's gaze. "It is." He insisted. "House is much more tolerable when he's got someone to share his misery with."

"True." Chase nodded, not being able to deny that fact. "I just hope it lasts."

--------------------------

"If you keep doing that, people are gonna start to think you're an easy target." Wilson greeted House late Friday night, stepping into his dimly lit office and commenting on the elder's man out-of-character jumpiness.

"I'm not doing anything." House denied, lowering his head again to study the thick textbook open on his desk.

"You're acting scared." Wilson pointed out plainly, keeping his hands firmly mounted on his hips. With his tie slightly loosened and his hair messed from running his hand through it too many times that day, he looked almost readied for battle.

"No I'm not." But House didn't look up, didn't even act indignant. Wilson knew he was cracking.

"It finally sunk in, didn't it?" A pointless question, as he already knew the answer, but it was a strategy, a foothold he had to use. "What happened last week. The fact you could have died."

"You know," House snapped, looking up for the briefest of moments but not catching his eyes, "I don't recall you being this annoying after I got shot."

That, Wilson hadn't been expecting, his grasp on the conversation faltered, and House took advantage of it. "Getting shot," he was rationalizing, "Much more deadly than having a knife wielded in your general direction. Yet we never had an in-depth conversation about that."

Wilson widened his eyes and took another step forward, debating on sitting. "Do you _want _to have a conversation about that?" He inquired genuinely.

He'd always wanted to discuss it, House's odd request for Ketamine, the rise and fall of his leg strength, even the shooter himself, his reasoning, his logic, anything that would let Wilson know House had indeed at least been affected by the guy's actions.

"No." House snapped now, crushing all hope that that would ever happen. Whatever House felt towards the shooting would remain locked within in his own mind for the time being. "I want to go home."

Wilson saw opportunity to regain his balance, so he seized it. "And I want you to admit that you're at least a little affected by what happened last week."

"I-"

But it was Wilson's turn. "Cameron came to see me today. She'd worried. She thinks you have PTSD."

House's eyes widened in anger. At first, Wilson didn't understand, but then, "You didn't..."

"No," he sighed, a little hurt that House could so easily accuse him of that sort of betrayal. "I didn't tell her anything. But she's smart; she's got an eye for detail. She probably started to notice how... Skittish you've been lately."

"I have not-"

"And Cuddy keeps asking me why you haven't been to the clinic," he interrupted again, trying to get all his cards on the table now. He could decide what to do with them once they were all laid out and facing upwards. "She said you haven't seen a patient in days. Could that possibly be fear?" He asked, couching worry in logic. "Fear of being alone with someone you don't know?"

And this time, House kept quiet.

Jimmy only had one hand left to play.

"And you're not bugging me about moving out."

"You have no place to go." House rolled his eyes as he stated the obvious. It might have been an attempt to anger Wilson, or get him to indulge in self-pity, but the younger man wouldn't fall pray to that trap again.

"You always annoy me to death." He said. Now at the edge of his friend's desk, he could hear the older man's shallow breathing; see the death grip he had on the side of his book. "Every time I've stayed at your place. Five AM jogs after my first wife kicked me out, consults at three-thirty in the morning about who Joey was destined to end up with, Dawson or Pacey, after your infarction. The pranks, the dishes. But now?" Greg had lowered his head, but James kept going. "Nothing. You don't even steal my food."

"It's been off-par lately." He retorted, instinctively hiding behind his sarcasm.

"I can only draw one possible conclusion." He had trip nines, two aces, his chips stacked and he was going all in with confidence. He was going to win this game. "You don't want me to leave."

Silence didn't get the chance to spread very thickly between them. "It was Pacey."

Okay, wildcard. "What?"

"It was Pacey, not Dawson." _Dawson's Creek_. James' had just laid down everything he had and Greg was discussing a teenage soap opera. "Joey ended up with Pacey. A lot of people didn't think that was right, thought it went against fate or their soul mate connection-"

"Goddamn it, House-"

"-but I always liked the way it ended. Dawson was a tool. At least Pacey could cook."

"You need to see someone." If games weren't going to work, then blunt honest truth was the next course on the menu. So to speak.

"You want me to cry my eyes out to some shrink about how I made a bad call and ended up with a knife at my throat for a few hours?" A lot was revealed in that statement, James noted, but Greg wasn't finished. "People go through worse things everyday. People get raped or they die slow, painful deaths-"

"And they get shot and threatened and almost go to jail for drug use, too. Should those people just sit back, grin and take it? Because they weren't rape victims and they aren't dying?" James was at his wits ends with this fight.

Finally, he sunk down in the chair across from Greg, wondering where they would go from here.

Instead of responding, Greg just bit his bottom lip slightly, turning his chair halfway around and staring out the window at the barely visible crescent moon. This time silence did span out thickly between them, seeping into the cracks of what had been said, what was left to be said and what would always remain cloaked in silence.

"C'mon." James finally whispered softly when he realized nothing more could be done. Not here, not now. "Let's go home."

--------------------------

The apartment was quiet. It was late. James could breath and feel his lungs expanding. Reach for the Chinese cartons on the table before him and hear the delicate scrape of a chopstick against folded cardboard. Lean back into his makeshift bed and the crinkling leather would sound loud, echoing in the silence.

He was waiting.

After the infarction - after Stacy had left - Greg had been plagued by nightmares. For about a month after his first - and only - go at physical therapy. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, gasping and sweating, sometimes crying out for comfort and something he believed he'd lost.

James would come into the bedroom and offer what comfort he could.

Greg would always be sitting up, grasping his right thigh like it was the only thing tying him to reality, keeping him afloat in an ocean of despair, the undercurrent rippling unrelentingly just below the surface.

At first, James had thought it had been the pain. Having the majority of your thigh muscle surgically removed hurt like a bitch, and Greg would be in constant pain for the rest of eternity. But after a while, James started to notice that he never reached for the Vicodin, never groped around for his lifeline.

Then he'd realized something, worked out the truth for himself. Greg wasn't waking up in pain. He was waking up in panic. Clutching his leg. Because he thought it wouldn't be there. His fear was mounted in a firm foundation of betrayal and anger. It hurt the Oncologist to see, to realize that this is what had become of his best friend.

Five years later, and he was waiting for a new sort of pain to manifest itself. He knew it would come. He was so sure.

Only it didn't.

Hours later and James was still sitting quietly on Greg's couch, waiting for something - he wasn't even sure what anymore. His eyelids were far from feeling heavy, though, the weight of exhaustion was not pressing down on him. The weight of worry, however...

Finally, James sucked in a deep breath and stood. The floorboards creaked under his weight, his back cracked after having been in the same position for so long. He moved slowly, with the caution he normally reserved specially for sneaking out of the house in the morning when he didn't want to wake his wife.

There was no wife anymore. Only House.

He reached his friend's bedroom door and was surprised to find that it wasn't shut all the way. Normally Greg liked to keep his privacy in tact. James just added this new anomaly to the list of things that sprung from the _not-so-traumatizing _events of last week.

Greg wasn't a heavy sleeper by far, but he wasn't exactly easy to wake, either. As James stood gingerly at the foot of the bed, his own long shadow casting an eerie blackness over the older man, he considered their lives.

In retrospect - as could be said of almost anyone's life - so many things could have been done better. Wrong decisions and hasty actions had led them both down roads and on journeys that echoed now with regret and anger. Sadness and helplessness. James did not like to revisit those places.

So much of the last six years could be summed up in the way Greg was currently curled around himself in bed. He was as close to the fetal position as he could manage with his leg and the covers had slipped away at some point during the night. He was shivering.

Not from the cold alone.

In this image, Greg House seemed almost helpless. Vulnerable. Which made James' heart beat a little faster with fear for himself - because when Greg wasn't strong, the world started to crumble just a little.

This was the life they had constructed for themselves, with the help and hindrance of others. James could stand there and contemplate their stupid, screwed up friendship and their stupid, screwed up lives all night. And six years ago, twenty years ago, a lifetime ago, he probably would have.

But if Greg had taught him anything, it was that forward was the only direction worth moving, and nothing could be gained by dwelling on the past. So he moved forward and stopped only when he reached the other side of Greg's bed.

Sitting himself down gently, trying to keep the mattress bending as minute as possible, James reached forward and gently swiped his hand through his best friend's thinning hair. It was the only comfort he had to offer.

Greg leaned into the touch subconsciously and the younger man found himself smiling. There was hope for them.

"...Jimmy..." came the slight sound. No more than a hitch in his voice, a fading breath.

"We're gonna be okay, Greg." He assured quietly, letting the words drift from his lips into the other's subconscious. "I'm gonna take care of you."

There was no verbal reply - he was still sound asleep - but a soft sigh wafted upwards and lifted a weight somewhere deep inside him. He would do anything for this man. Had done so much already.

James stayed on the side of the bed, his hand in Greg's hair, offering silent comfort that he knew they both silently ached for day in and day out, until the sun peaked through the bedroom windows and he knew it was time.

To move on. To let go. To change things. To make good on his promise. To take care of his best friend. To see him happy again, no matter what it took.

A month later, James started slipping ground up anti-depressants into Greg's coffee.

Fin.


End file.
